House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox News Channel’s America Reports this afternoon to discuss how Democrats’ radical anti-police agenda has caused a dramatic rise in crime in cities across the country and record rates of police retirements. Whip Scalise called out Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats for their ridiculous attempts to distance themselves from their efforts to defund the police. In addition, Whip Scalise slammed President Biden for encouraging tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to unlawfully enter the United States after he reversed President Trump’s successful border security and immigration policies.  

Click here or on the image above to watch the interview.

  On the Biden Administration's self-made border crisis:    “You could see what President Trump had done to get control of the border. Because when he came in, we were having a similar border crisis. The ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy was something that was very effective. President Trump negotiated an agreement with the President of Mexico. A lot of people thought he couldn't do that because they were having a lot of friction. You saw it play out in the press, but yet President Trump was able to get that agreement, and it stopped a lot of the flow. The Northern Triangle agreements, agreements with countries in Central America, were very helpful also. And then, of course, building the wall was helping stop the flow because you are allowing Border Patrol agents to do what they want to do.    “I was down in McAllen, Texas, not long ago, along one of the worst areas of [illegal] border crossings. And what the Border Patrol agents there tell you is, you know, when you had all those tools in place, they were able to focus their time on stopping the drug dealers, the drug cartels from Mexico that right now, unfortunately, have complete control of America's southern border. They were apprehending them. They were stopping fentanyl and other dangerous drugs. They were stopping the human trafficking where so many sexual assaults are occurring. They're not able to do that right now because of what President Biden's done.   “So yes, I'd like to see real reform to get back to a functioning legal immigration system. President Trump wanted to do that too. Nancy Pelosi never wanted to get an agreement. Democrats have had a horrible record on this. When they had complete control under President Obama – House, Senate, and White House – they never tried to fix immigration. Today, they're not trying to. They're trying to open our borders, send that message out to the world. It's not just South and Central America. As you know, you've got people from Middle Eastern countries on the Terrorist Watch List coming across our southern border. That's how bad it is. Biden created this mess. Kamala Harris has been right there as the ‘Border Czar.’ She's helping enable this crisis, and he could stop it today by going back to the things President Trump put in place that worked.”   On Democrats’ support for the “Defund the Police” movement:    “It's very clear Democrats embraced this crazy radical idea of defunding the police last summer. It had been building for years in fringe elements of the Democrat Party, but they wholly embraced it. You saw everybody from Speaker Pelosi to some of her top lieutenants publicly coming out, calling police racists, calling for defunding police, calling for dismantling the ability [for] police to do their jobs. And it had a devastating effect. We saw retirements at all-time highs, and now we're seeing the other bad side of that. And that is crime out of control in many of these cities that defunded police. And they're all Democrat-run cities.    “The Democrat Party could resolve this today by saying they were wrong, just admit they were wrong and go back to their local mayors that did this and the city councils and say, ‘Refund the police at the local levels. Build your police force back up.’ To come to the federal government and say, ‘Hey, come mop up the mess that we created,’ is not the answer. It’s going and fixing the problems that they created in those cities that all of these Washington Democrats enabled, supported, and cheered on until the public revolted against it. Now they're trying to wash their hands of the dumpster fire they created.”   On Democrats refusing to take responsibility for their anti-cop agenda:   “Well, if you look at most cities today, look, Chicago, just this last weekend had almost 80 shootings and their mayor defunded police. Are they really not going to connect those dots and try to think people don't know what's going on? People in those most affected communities are the ones that are the most livid, saying, ‘Hey, this idea was a complete and utter failure. Stop defunding the police.’ Instead, they want to try to push [the] blame to other people. Everybody knows what happened. Everybody knows what they did. Now they just want to try to avoid the blame because they never want to admit that they were wrong.   “They want to blame other people, but defunding the police backfired. It was a stupid idea. They did it anyway. And now we're seeing the results with high crime in so many of these cities. And incidentally, you see a lot of these in these local cities; the local prosecutors are not prosecuting a lot of these criminals. They're not prosecuting a lot of criminals who are using guns in their crimes, yet they want to ban guns from law-abiding citizens. So, their next step is going to be gun control, not against the criminals who are committing crimes, but against us, those of us who are law-abiding citizens. We've got to push back against that too, but that's the next step.”